ChristopherReevesLegs

There gonna get absolutely crushed in the playoffs this year too I can feel it And there's another off season of "how will they get out of this one" coming.

"A fire begins with a single spark"

Be me Mitch Marner Only cup I care about is the gold one I'll be drinking out of when I get my payday Get drafted by cash cow spend heavy leafs organization mrburns.excellent.exe Hire league renowned money grubbing agent Darren Ferris Proceed to hold the team hostage with payday demands Fans and media turning on me ohcrapohcrapohcrap.gif Initiate operation deflect blame Undermine coach by complaining to management Agent plants stories in the media slandering the coach Fans jump off the Marner hate train and immediately onto the coach hate train sheeple.img Coach gets fired I'm a victim now and everyone loves me Light cigar... $65 million and no more bag skates boissss It's good to be a mitch

At the time I had yeah, but in retrospect now I have respect for what he was trying to do. It's a cruel trick fersure, and it's extreme even in my eyes... but I think it accomplished its goal (partially). He wanted Kadri to work harder (he did) and he wanted the team to hate him (they did). From what I read there was no bad blood between Marner and Kadri. At the end of the day, Babs prolly overplayed his hand. He doubled down on being a hard ass when he probably should have softened a lil. Oh well I guess. Life as a leaf is constant pain.

I don't know that the problem with the Leafs was defensive per say. It's definitely an offense heavy team though... It's watching them lose board battle after board battle and lacking any real fight in there game. They totally come off as confused or disinterested at times. That's probably to blame on Babs losing the room, and also a team lacking any real role-players. 2-0 in the Keefe era Like many have said, I think Seattle would be a unique opportunity for Babs. He'll have a ton of say in roster selection and can build the team to fit his evil ways. However, Seattle seems help bent on being the new, different, progressive, team in the league. So I doubt they go with such an old school jackass lol

See, IDK about this. I remember playing for a coach in particular who was a total jack ass (IMO). He would go on psycho vein popping yelling rants, throw s*** at us, and pretty much walk the line as closely as he could to abusive. I and 99% of the team hated him, and I even remember threatening to quit the team multiple times. But I never did quit, or quit trying, and I had my best season ever under that guy. Still hate em thou lol Agree it's on himself. Maybe if he had adapted to a more top heavy roster things would have been different, but I don't think we're talking tactics here. I think we're talking mutiny. That is, his players weren't even trying to implement his system. There was a lot of 'do what you want and wait for your highlight reel' kinda play going on towards the end there. Is that on the coach for losing the room? 100%. Is that on the players for giving up on their coach? Also 100%. Difference I see here is: Red Wings pulled through and won a cup despite the horrible evil ways of Mike Babcock, and the Leafs rolled over and died in the face of Babs adversity. Not sure the later is worthy of reward... Yup and the Tronna media is now tripping over themselves all of the sudden to show how horrible Babs was AND THATS WHY THEY HAVENT WON A CUP ALREADY. Prepare for the coping mechanism from Leafs fans that Babs ruined player X and that's really why Y did or didn't happen. And who's fault is it that they're in boom or bust right NOW? That's on Dubas. He's created a roster situation where if they don't win a cup this year there in trouble again. Their in for another summer of hard work completely redoing the roster AGAIN regardless of what happens. At least when we had a young Dats and Z they had Lids to lead them and protect them. Tavares is supposed to be that bridge between the coach and the players and idk if he was snoozing on that one, but that bridge seems to have been neglected. Johnny T was a mistake. And that's sorta a problem within itself. It's running to tell mom when dad doesn't give you your way. And again, I reiterate, it's not the Leafs job to smile, it's to win hockey games. Happy players aren't always motivated players, but that's a fine line. The retroactive witch hunting is in full court press. I guess I should have expected it from the s*** show that is Toronto. The refined story I've heard is that Babs pressed Marner for who doesn't work hard on the team. Marner of course replied himself, but Babs continued to press him for a real answer. Eventually Marner relented and said Kadri (dass raciss) and then Babs told Kadri. That's a coaching technique as old as the game itself, and Babs could prolly only pull it off on a rook like Marner. Definitely an extreme technique though. My question for anyone who finds the story troubling, do you think Scotty Bowman wasn't doing stuff like this??? Sidenote: The biggest success story from Babs time in Toronto is Kadri. He turned that kid from bratty 2/3 C who takes too many emotional penalties, to premium 2C shutdown centermen. Not saying that this story is what did that for Kadri... but that is what Babs can do for a player when a player buys in to what he's selling. If I was a Leafs fan this is the kinda of thing I would've wanted from Matthews and Marners time with Babs, but apparently it didn't take... it worked for Nazem, why not the other two?

For some reason I thought it was gonna be this video Mantha out and a hole in the top line... Zadina on a hot streak... This is the perfect storm. I expect big things.

Yeah and I think Babs honest response to that would be "It's not my job to get them to 'like me' " Maybe I'm wrong though. Maybe this league is becoming the NBA and coaching will be all about superstar hand holding soon...

2 pts for the bad buys

This is either genius level 9000 or he's he's been knocked in the head a few times lol

As long as we're playing the Devils, this is a good christian thread

MARLEAU PLAYED MORE MINUTES THAN AUSTON

That heavy heavy good good

Seider is sucha Chad. The big dick confidence on him is tremendous.

Pretty much this

I'm thinking a back up, like a discord, a subreddit, an email chain, an alternative site, or something else? Just a place to go when things are down. We should have a vote thread with all suggestions

For a good amount of time there this fanbase in general, not pointing any fingers at you, swung their dicks around like Mike was the next coming of Scotty. Was that totally premature and wrong? Absolutely. Any overratedness he had going to the Leafs probably started with Detroit fans. Then as soon as the roster started aging out, with no elite talent coming back in, Wings fans, like most sports fans do, started turning on the coach. Specifically calling him overrated. And personally, I'm like, yeah... ya dinguses... WE OVERATED HIM lol. So then he spurns the Wings for a rival, and the rest is history. The man goes from best in show to "Babs sucks" in less than 5 years time. I just think that screams butthurtness on our fandoms behallf more than it does any true evaluation of him as a coach. And in reality, I think he's probably somewhere in the middle, not amazing, not suck, just an above average coach who does a few things particularly well. That's why I ask where you rank him. Overrated doesn't necessarily mean bad or good, just lesser than. I would agree he's probably not gold standard Babs, but somewhere around top10 or 33rd percentile, I would say yeah. In regards to his style, I could rant for a while about how I think "the new NHL style" is a trap. But instead of writing a book I'll just agree to disagree there. I think shutdown coaches will always be a commodity with value. At the time, did you not think the switch from Detroit was Toronto was smart for him? I would absolutely agree with his critics that he's always had stacked teams. He's maneuvered his NHL career in that fashion. Breaks into the league with Anaheim, then immediately jumps ship and leverages that success to a position with a powerhouse Detroit team. As soon as that starts going south he leverages his success there for a bidding war that takes him to a quickly up n coming Toronto. The fact that he got fired doesn't mean I don't think he was in a bad spot. Ah I was gonna use this expression, but you beat me to it! I'm absolutely advocating jamming square pegs into round holes in this instance. This is also why I agree with you that Babs didn't fit the style there. If the Leafs were a team full of John Tavares generation players, I would be right with you. Babs is a mistake, bring in a Laviollette or something. But I see a team of mostly sub 25 year old players with more than a few key pieces still being 22/23. There's a lot of growing to do there yet, and I think Babs would have been the ideal coach to mold Matthews, Marner, Kapanen, Nylander from young talented hot shots, into complete mature dominant 2-way players. In fact I thought that was Shanahan's plan all along, and I kinda feel like Shanny caved to Dubas and his players here. Of course I would expect growing pains, but I think that's a recipe for long term growth and success. Even if you fire Babs in 2 to 3 years when the transformation is complete and then go with a new coach. IDK he's done some pretty big stuff in a short time. Signed arguably the biggest UFA of this decade. Tangled with some insanely high dollar hold out RFAs. Moved mountains to get his team cap compliant. Made some pretty big balls trades for guys like Muzzin. Already has one of his draft picks on the team in Rasmus Sandin. Brought in solid KHL contributors like Mikheyev. Dubas has been no slouch so far. I have no problem with analytics. But I don't think it's the end all be all. I do think Tavares was a mistake for them. Not because he's not a good player worth the money, but because of the wheels that set in motion. There's a reason Larkin is on lists for best contracts in the NHL, and Matthews, Marner, and Nylander are not. I think that team would have been very wise to avoid Tavares, keep overly rapid growth in check, and build that team out in a slower more nuanced way. But I guess that's probably easier said than done in a high pressure market like toronto.

Sorry but that's just patently wrong. Babs 4th line was averaging 10 min a games. That's less than our own 4th line and probably much of the league. He relied heavily on his top9.

"Sorry Ken, we talked about your offer and decided it's a no from us" "I get it Stephen, a 1st is too much, what if you send me your 2nd and Nielsen, and I'll give some good ol future considerations in return?" A. Yes B. No C. Throw the phone at the wall

I bought an EA NHL console game for the first time in many years this year. I drafted Raymond 5th overall first season and he immediately made my team and played on the 3rd line. Kids reel gud and RH

I don't think I've said once in this thread that I think Babs is the best coach ever He's the most overrated to you? Yeah I mean I somewhat agree, when we were calling him #1 in the league we were probably overrating him by a good amount. So where does he fall then for you if he's not #1? Top5? Top10? Top15? Bottom 15? I think he's among the top in the league. Like probably top10 IMO. I think he's pretty career savy and always puts himself in situations where he knows he can win. I think he's a defensively minded coach and runs excellent defensive systems. I think he's also very demanding and hard to play for and plays mind games with his players based on what players have said about him. I don't think this is why we disagree though. The problem I have is not that bAbS iS bEsT CAnT fIrE hIM, it's that I fundamentally believe a team comprised of players sub 25 years old should conform to the coach, and not the coach to them. In regards to Dubas, what has he done that's so innovative and great?

"Millennials are ruining the leafs" - Boomer circa 2019

I was gonna say, they almost suffer from TOO MUCH TALENT. A good problem to have no doubt, but still a tricky one in its own right. Dubas seems to be afraid to lose any of his offensive sweethearts which I think exposes some of the immaturity he has an early career 33 yo GM. You gotta make tough calls. Trade Nylander. Tell Marner to go to Switzerland and that he can come back when he's ready to be a serious NHLer. So ******* glad we have iron will Yzerman at the helm lol